As well as the main business of the Achill experience, last week was also an opportunity to make some progress on the VITAE project in which we will develop teacher training for integration of ICT in everyday practice.
The first development is that instead of developing a standard course and tweaking it to meet each different partner context, we will try out different approaches first and then identify the common aspects which work. Therefore I have been busy developing ideas for the Danish version of our course and Achill was an opportunity to work on details. One aspect which has been worrying me from the start is that we said that we would also train our participants to become mentors to their colleagues. This had me imagining complicated two tier training with the ICT first and the mentoring later. But I have now found a way of integrating the mentor training as part of the ICT training which is a much more elegant solution. It will basically involve the trainers acting as mentors and making this part of the course visible and explicit to the participants so that they can easily copy the way in which we do it.
Since some of the VITAE partners were also on Achill we were also able to discuss some new ideas such as how to incorporate mobile learning into the training in order to give us an opportunity to find out what potential this form of learning may have more generally. By the end of our discussions I could see opportunities to include some sort of surprise mobile event during the face to face element of the Danish training as well as an element of mentor/coaching once the participants have returned to their home institutions to put into practice what they have learned.
We realise that there is nothing so inspiring as a good example so therefore I recorded interviews with two of the teachers on Achill who had not tried this intensive, experiential way of learning before. These may well find their way into the Absolutely Intercultural podcast but they were primarily recorded to contribute to a library of examples of different ways of learning.
I am therefore satisfied with the progress made while on Achill and now preparing for our first online meeting in which we will try to agree on which sets of standards we need to follow for the duration of the project. There will be three sets of standards.
1. Standards for ensuring quality of professional development - these would be standards which we project partners should follow ouselves.
2. Standards for teacher competences in ICT integration. These need to include pedagogic as well as technological competences. The NETS standards are a step in the right direction though still very focused on technological competence. Just emerging are a new set of standards from UNESCO which look very promising.
3. National curricula These will be different in each partner country and we will of course have to be aware of what teachers are expected to teach in the different partner countries. In practice these requirements tend to be vague and not formulated in any detail.
Once we have decided on the various standards which will apply to the VITAE products then we can go ahead with our aims and objectives of the training.
Keywords: Achill, euvitae, mobile learning, NETS, Route 21, UNESCO, VITAE
